In our “child protection system,” children are five
times more likely to die from physical abuse and 11 times more likely to
be sexually abused than in their own homes, Child Protective Services
Watch tells us. The organization also reports that, on average, a foster
child will spend at least three years in the system and live in three
different homes during their stay in foster care.

It would be a comfort if we could at least say that
there are not too many children in the system, but we would be wrong.
There are presently over a half a million American children in foster
care — nearly enough children to replace the entire population of our
nation's capitol. On any given day, more than 91,000 of those children
are Californians (for purposes of comparison, that's roughly the
population of Santa Barbara).

Californians should be especially embarrassed and
outraged. This state has one of the worst systems for providing child
welfare services in the entire country. The Sacramento Bee reported in
January that just last summer police burst into a house to arrest
suspected drug dealers and found seven children inside who depended on
the State of California for their care. Last year when the federal
government reviewed states' services for children and families,
California failed. In fact, the legislative analyst's office reported
that California is the only state that failed more than four of the
seven standards for children's safety, well-being and placement in a
permanent home.

These children often travel from house to house with
their few personal belongings in a used paper grocery bag or thrown over
their shoulder in a plastic garbage sack. More than 1 in 10 California
foster children will pack their things and move to a home filled with
strangers, go to sleep amidst unknown surroundings and often go to a new
school five or more times for every 12 months that they have been
entrusted to foster care.

The Little Hoover Commission, a California State
government oversight organization reports that, despite perhaps good
intentions, some experts estimate that nearly half of the children in
California's foster system should never have been removed from their
families and have been even more traumatized as a result. The children
would have benefited most if their families had been given some basic
support, treatment and parenting training.

To make matters worse, once children enter the system,
the system can't even keep track of them. In any given month the state
departments entrusted with tracking these children have no idea where
hundreds of them are — some may be runaways, some may have been
kidnapped by relatives, and some are simply unaccounted for.

Our government is funding this system in our names and
with our tax dollars. We say this system is un-American. Our system for
handling abandoned, neglected and abused children is broken. Consider
that a nationwide Casey Foundation Study found that we are spending
nearly $100 billion dollars annually on direct and indirect costs
associated with child maltreatment and we end up with a system that
often appears worse than leaving children in the homes we considered
unfit.

Part of the reason so many children end up in this
broken system is due to the way that the federal government pays for
child-welfare services at the state and county levels; these local
governments earn more federal money by having more children in the
system. Technically this is called a “perverse incentive.” State and
county governments receive open-ended funding from the federal
government for children who are in the Child Welfare System, while they
only get limited funds to provide services that might eliminate the need
for some children to be in this system in the first place. Linda Wallace
Pate, a veteran attorney in foster cases, justly states that “it's
scandalous that the California foster care system has been reduced to a
'kids for cash' system.”

It's easy to start pointing fingers, and social
workers — who are the direct links to these children — often get the
worst rap. In most cases, however, these are compassionate, well-meaning
and horrifyingly overworked individuals trying to operate within a
broken system.

The real responsibility lies with legislators and
voters. With a 2003- 2004 State budget of $1.7 billion ($447 million
less than last year's), it is unclear how California will be able to
improve its services for our needy children. Nonetheless, even in this
period of severe budget cuts and competing priorities, legislators and
voters should make these children a top priority. Over the years there have been multiple attempts to
fix the system, and currently the Department of Social Services is
implementing a Child Welfare Redesign program. All of these efforts,
however, do not go far enough because they do not offer a true redesign
of the system - instead they offer only symptom management.
Organizations, like the Little Hoover Commission, have provided multiple
reports offering thorough descriptions of what needs to change, but
unfortunately these are not the changes that are implemented. We must
demand centralized oversight, communication, and organization of the
state agencies that serve our most disadvantaged children. Moreover, we
must take action on behalf of these children who do not have a voice in
our political system. After all, these children can't vote.